Beer

This part of Franconia is mainly a wine region. But Zeilitzheim is right on the border between wine and beer country. To the East, toward Bamberg, Beer thrives. In the next village over (Krautheim) there is a brewery that brews decent beer (a good Pilsner even Germans from the north like; crisper than the Pils they normally brew around here).

Photo: two 15-litre Krautheimer Pilsner kegs. Picture taken on Sunday morning after the wedding at the castle.

Moving Pictures

I've resisted the whole home movie thing for a very long time. With the ability to easily make high-quality, even HD, moving pictures within seconds "out of pocket" there really is no excuse for not giving it a shot, though. And with tools like Apple's iMovie any idiot can cut digital film within minutes of importing it from the camera.

Of course the classic use of home filming is to document the devlopment of one's children and to be able to capture those cutest of moments. Like this one I shot of Isa:



I shot this film with my tiny still camera that also has a video function but nothing fancy (so look forward to better-quality short films in the future as I soon hope to be the proud owner of a flip MinoHD cam).

Of course I plan on posting films of stuff happening at the castle and in the castle garden as I can hardly imagine that anyone but family are too interested in movies of our daughter running away from a spider...

Long Weekend Ahead

Sunday and Monday are national holidays here in Germany: Pentecost (or Whitsun, in German: Pfingsten).

It means that the hotel is booked out on Saturday and that we have our annual "Weinbergswanderung" (leisurely hiking through the vineyards from wine stand to wine stand) on Sunday.

Photo: Paeonia officinalis which is called "Pfingstrose" in German because it usually blooms around this holiday.

This is what we found at the volleyball pit today

Zeilitzheim, Franconia, Bavaria, Germany... See you there!

Foot

The new beach volleyball pit is a lot of fun. I have a great excuse to be a kid again when I go there with my daughters. I'll have to pack a shovel and some buckets for some serious sandcastle building next time.



Funny how the brain works: the footprint looks like a positive or a negative image, depending on how you decide to look at it.

Sitrep from the front

I feel so bogged down in the trenches right now. Not much time for decent recce and foresight. Time for a thorough GTD review to get back on track.

The kids both had shots today but didn't cry or complain. So we're making improvements on that end. They play doctor and/or nurse on me all the time and seem to prefer the game of testing my reflexes by hammering away at my knees. That's what you get for teaching them "real-life" scenarios.

Katharina is off to a friend's birthday tomorrow afternoon. Isa might be going to her toddlers' meetup with Kati in the morning so I might get to work on my book for an hour on my "day off". Not that an hour really gets me very far. But an hour is a lot under the circumstances.

What else? Oh: it's raining! I love it. Very good for the garden and it's helping cool things off after two hot and humid days (for German standards; not compared to Louisiana).

Brings back a memory: one of the first evenings in Leesville, Louisiana: my roommate Brian and I had just rented our apartment and were moving out of the BOQ (bachelor officers' quarters). It was extremely hot and humid and then it started to pour a thick, hot and steamy rain. We were walking along the road to our apartment in the rain in t-shirts and almost stepped on a snake by the side of the road. We just looked at each other and agreed: we have really arrived in Louisiana. It actually turned out being a nice tour with the 2nd Armored Cavalry at Fort Polk (the few months out of the 2-3 years we actually had "in-garrison" and at home.

Poppy

I just like how this looks on black. The orange poppies soared up in the castle garden and probably won't be around much longer. Everything is growing so fast this year!

Roses

In the castle courtyard yesterday.

Another

Weinfest in Germany

What is Franconia (Franken) without its Weinfest season?! I must admit I'm not much of a weinfest goer anymore (compared to my youth). But occasionally we still find time on a Sunday afternoon (the most quiet and agreeable time to do so) to visit a weinfest nearby. Last Sunday we took our daughters to the weinfest in Stammheim and the had a lot of fun, as you can tell by this picture:



If you visit the region between April and October, be sure to ask me which village has a weinfest on at the time. There is hardly a weekend without one nearby.

German Wine - Bavarian Wine - Frankenwein

This evening I visited a wine seminar with four of our waitresses. Topic of the evening was the typically Franconian grape "Silvaner". It was an interesting and fun seminar and luckily not dry, though the wine we tasted was dry and very good.

The Wikipedia article cited above appears to need some editing, though...

Spring to Summer - Asparagus Season in Franconia

With yesterday's feast day of St. Sophia - which marks the last day of typically cold days in May referred to as the Ice Saints in German weather lore - we are now definitely heading for summer. Now that the danger of early-morning frost has passed we have set out the Geraniums on the window sills of the castle and filled the fountain in the courtyard.

The asparagus season is fully underway. If you come visit Franconia in May until mid June, be sure to try our asparagus that is mostly consumed in its white state (though Germans are catching on to the merits of green asparagus, too).

Photo: the Franconian "Wine Queen" Anna Saum at an asparagus lunch in the castle garden

Cockpit - Ready for Takeoff

I've been using mindmaps with links to vital files and hyperlinks to important places on the web for quite a while now. I prefer the graphic interface to my data and its portrayal of processes. I'm thinking of taking this approach one step further:

How cool would it be to have a virtual cockpit in the cloud that shows you the vital statistics / statuses of major processes? Modules I can think of straight off are:

Navigation - where am I, where am I going (with pertinent travel data)
Finances - Account balances, due ins and outs
Supplies - anything due out of stock anytime soon?
Radar - what's up ahead?
And of course GTD integration (i.e. a view on next actions in things)

Perhaps there is already something like this out there. If so: where?

Kylie Minogue Concert in Ischgl

What a blast! I was able to enjoy yesterday's Kylie Mingue concert in Ischgl, Austria, from the VIP / press area. That was quite an honor for a blogger! I'm sure this blog won't win any awards, though. I keep my German blog about life in the castle more up to date...

The concert was great, and: what a view! Back home in Germany today.